Unusual English silver watch with wandering hours Circa 1690

Silver pocket watch with verge escapement
–
An extremely unusual and rare pocket watch with wandering hours made by Abraham Fromanteel in London, England, circa 1690. This silver pair cased watch features a magnificently decorated outer case, adorned with portraits of a gentleman and a lady, as well as depictions of animals and a central, vacant cartouche. The inner case is plain and bears the maker’s punch mark RN. The silver dial has a retrograde minute display in the upper part with underneath an arc shaped cutout revealing a revolving gilt disc, a window displaying the Roman hours, below a retrograde scale indicating the quarter hours, the lower part is chased and engraved with foliage and flowers. The movement is fitted with a very early English verge escapement, unusual pillars and a very large balance. The movement is signed.
–
Diameter: 55.5 mm
–
Weight: 134 g
–
Signed: Fromanteel
–
The item shown here was most likely made by the important watchmaker Abraham Fromanteel. These pocket watches, without hands and featuring a wandering hour, are generally extremely rare, especially signed examples. Only four pieces made by Fromanteel are known, three of which still bear the signature ‘Fromanteel’ from before 1700 and one with the signature ‘Fromanteel & Clarke’ after the company was renamed around 1700.
–
Fromanteel
Abraham Fromanteel was the son of the famous watchmaker Ahasuerus Fromanteel (1607-1693), who was the first to make pendulum clocks in Great Britain. Abraham was born in London around 1646. He was trained as a watchmaker between 1662 and 1669 and released by the Clockmakers’ Company in 1680. He lived in London, Amsterdam and Newcastle upon Tyne, where the Fromanteel family had branches. Fromanteel day and night watches are also known from this period, but the wandering hour watch is even rarer.
–
A wandering hour complication displays the time by moving a pointer showing the hour across an arc showing the minutes. Watches with such a dial were first seen in the 17th century. In England, they were often commissioned by the King as a gift to visitors or as an appreciation of their loyalty to the government. One of the first watchmakers to adapt this design to a pocket watch was the British watchmaker Joseph Windmills. In 1656, the Campani brothers designed a clock for Pope Alexander XII, who used it as his bedtime alarm. It traditionally consists of a central three- or four armed cross with a disc or cylinder at the end of each arm which rotates to show the current hour and points to the minutes along an arc shaped track. The complication is fairly straightforward, as each of the 12 hours is evenly divisible by three or four, so each arm can show the same number of hours. Similarly, the dial is divisible according to the number of arms, so a three-armed system will show the minutes on a 120º track, while a four armed system uses 90º of the dial.